


picture me in the weeds (before i learned civility)

by ProbablyVoldemort



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blood Magic, Burns, Childhood Friends, Dragons, Fae & Fairies, Gen, Memory Loss, Nothing too gory with either of those two tags but i figured i'd tag them just to be safe, Quests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25641181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyVoldemort/pseuds/ProbablyVoldemort
Summary: There are three days from when Clarke was seven that she doesn't remember.  Not odd in itself, except for what those days contain.  She remembers leaving her house with her neighbour John to play in the woods like they did every day, and then she remembers coming home three days later.  She has no memory of where they'd gone or what happened or why John never came back.Now, Clarke returns to the woods for the first time in sixteen years.  After running into someone from her past who shouldn't exist, Clarke begins to wonder if everything she's believed for years could really be a lie.
Relationships: Clarke Griffin & Emori, Clarke Griffin & John Murphy, Emori & Clarke Griffin & John Murphy, Minor John Murphy/Emori (The 100)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 38
Collections: Chopped 3.0 Round 3





	picture me in the weeds (before i learned civility)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Chopped Bitches!
> 
> This round is Fantasy Round and includes the tropes:  
> \- Heist AU  
> \- Character drinks a potion that makes them unable to lie  
> \- Gardener AU  
> \- Forehead Kiss
> 
> Okay so this is vaguely inspired by Taylor Swift's new song Seven because Folklore has been like my life for the last week. Does this fic make any sense at all? Unclear. Did I read it through in the proper order even once before uploading it? Nope. Did I post it anyway? Hell yeah.
> 
> Hopefully this isn't as giant a hot mess as I think it might be, but you're all gonna have to read it anyway!
> 
> Fun fact! This hot mess won:  
> \- 1st Place Overall!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH  
> \- 1st Place Gardener AU!  
> \- 2nd Place Forehead Kisses!  
> \- 3rd Place Fantasy Theme!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who voted!!! See y'all in the finals!

By the time Clarke turned seven, her life had become routine. On the days that she didn’t have school, she woke up with the sun, jumping down the stairs with what her mom called far too much energy. She ate her Froot Loops and chatted off the ear of whatever parent had been delegated to the early morning routine for the day. Then she ran back upstairs and threw on her overalls and a t-shirt and the pink gumboots she’d gotten for her birthday.

And then she was back downstairs, grabbing her backpack where her mom or her dad had packed her snacks and her lunch, only pausing long enough for someone to tie her hair back into two braids.

And then she was out the door.

John Murphy from next door was usually scrambling over the fence at that point, dropping down into her yard. They’d share a grin and hoist their backpacks and then open the Griffins’ gate into the woods.

There were fairies and dragons and magic in the woods, harrowing plots and narrow escapes and dangerous quests that they’d recount to their parents with their mouths full at dinner.

They were always home for dinner, because that was the rule. _You can go play in the woods with John, but be home for dinner._

They were always home for dinner, until they weren’t.

Until one sunny Tuesday in July of 2004 when neither Clarke nor John returned. Not for dinner. Not for bedtime.

Not until search parties had been sent out, Amber Alerts broadcast. Not until the woods had been scoured by everyone in their town and the surrounding ones.

Not until three days later, when Clarke knocked on the back door of her house in her overalls and her pink gumboots, one of her braids undone and a large cut up her forearm but otherwise unharmed.

John wasn’t with her. Clarke didn’t know where he was, and she didn’t know where she’d been.

The last thing she remembered was leaving with him through the back gate.

Clarke spent years in therapy, being grilled about what happened during those three days, what they had been doing. She told them about the fairies and the dragons and the magic, and they told her it was games, that they needed to know where her and John _really_ went in the woods so that they could try to find him.

His mom had been nice before. Now she drank and she yelled and she wished it had been Clarke who hadn’t come back instead.

Clarke wasn’t allowed to go in the woods. The back gate was replaced with more fence, and she was stuck in her house and her back yard. Her parents wanted her to remember where she’d been, where John still was, and they stopped listening to her talk of the fairies. They wanted the _truth_ , and they didn’t believe her.

So she told them about fallen logs and houses made of sticks. She left out the fairies and the dragons and the magic when she couldn’t turn it into something pretend, and she told lies that sounded like the truth.

She lied until even she believed it. Until she forgot about the fairies and the dragons and the magic. Until John’s dad died of a broken heart and his mom from too much drinking. Until another family bought the house next door. Until the kids at school stopped looking at her as the girl who’d gotten their classmate kidnapped and couldn’t even remember it, and she could make her other friends back again. Until looking at the house where John used to live didn’t sting anymore. Until she had to look at old pictures to remember John’s face.

She lied until they weren’t even lies anymore, not really, because if it was a lie, then her whole life was.

And then she grew up. She moved from elementary school to middle school to high school. She graduated and went to university to study to be a doctor.

And she forgot about the friend she’d lost and the magic they’d found in the woods.

Until she couldn’t.

“Are you sure you’ll be fine?”

Clarke sighed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes as she tied her runners. “I’m twenty three years old, Mom,” she assured, glancing up with a strained smile. “I have my phone. I know the area. I’ll be fine, and I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

Abby had more frown lines than she should have from all the worrying she did. Clarke was honestly shocked she had been allowed to move out to go to university with how much her life had been monitored after her disappearance. Clarke understood, of course, but it didn’t mean she’d enjoyed having to have her parents know where she was every second of every day growing up.

Abby finally sighed. “Alright,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the wall. “Be safe.”

“Of course,” Clarke promised, pressing a kiss against her mom’s cheek before leaving the door.

She tucked her headphones into her ears as she walked down the street, scrolling through her phone for a good playlist for her run.

She glanced up at the Murphy house as she past—the Greens had lived there for years but it was always the Murphy house—and wondered for the millionth time what had happened in those woods.

Kidnapping had been what the police had settled on. Clarke and John had been kidnapped. Clarke’s amnesia was explained either by something happening that was traumatic enough for her brain to block the whole ordeal from her mind, or the kidnapper had done some psychological brainwashing shit to make her forget.

Another favourite theory was that they just got lost and the search parties missed them. They were in the woods for days completely alone. Clarke survived but John didn’t, and watching him die was what made her forget.

Neither theory explained how Clarke made it home, clean and unharmed save for the gash on her arm.

She brushed her fingers over the scar, raised and a stark white even against her summer tan, and then shook off the thoughts of John as she started on her run.

She paused again, though, only minutes later at the start of a trail that led into the woods.

Clarke hadn’t been in the woods since she was seven. The police had tried to have her retrace her steps, but other than showing them their favourite spots to play and lamenting the fact that the fairies weren’t coming out, that hadn’t led to anything. And then her parents had never let her play there again.

It had been sixteen years now since she’d been inside the woods, and there was something about it, something about the huge oaks and dirt path and the wind, that was calling to her.

Something made her turn her jog around the surrounding neighbourhoods into a jog through the woods, and her feet left the pavement behind for the dirt.

The scent of the woods was familiar, like coming home. There was something about the air that made it feel easier to breathe, and she focused on listening to her music as her feet took her where they wanted.

She was a long ways off the path before she realized she’d left it, pausing to catch her breath and take in her surroundings.

She found herself just to the edge of a little clearing, one that sparked memories she’d long forgotten. It was perfectly circular with a large rock standing straight up in the centre.

 _“It’s called the fairy rock.”_ John’s voice was clear in her mind from so many years ago, from the first time her parents had answered their begging for her to be allowed to join John in the woods on their own with a yes, when John showed her all the cool things he’d found. _“If you touch it, sometimes the fairies let you into their home. They like it when you tell them jokes.”_

Clarke smiled softly at the memory, a pang going through her heart at the thought of the boy she used to know. The police had dubbed him dead eventually, calling off the search. She couldn’t remember anything from the time she’d been missing, but she had been adamant he was still alive. She supposed that even if he had been then, he probably wasn’t now.

She followed the edge of the circle until she found the remains of their hideout. Sometimes the fairies wouldn’t let them in and they’d spend all or part of the day waiting them out. She remembered it being a castle, but now it was nothing more than some branches leaning against a tree.

She turned back to the clearing, crossing her arms and taking it in. The clearing was completely empty aside from the rock, like someone took care to clear out any debris that might fall in it. There was grass in the clearing, which was odd in itself as the rest of the forest floor was covered in dirt or moss. It was short grass, too, like it had been freshly mowed, and wildflowers grew in swirling patterns.

Even now, Clarke could understand why she and John believed the stone in the middle would lead them to fairies. The clearing itself looked magical.

The same something that had tugged her into the woods was now making her step out into the clearing, her feet leading her closer and closer to the fairy rock. She reached out, lay her hand on the cool surface, and felt her breath catch in her throat.

The last time she’d touched the fairy rock, she’d been seven and surrounded by adults.

 _“Sometimes it doesn’t work,”_ she’d told them. She and John had always been disappointed when they couldn’t see the fairies, so she wanted them to be prepared. _“Sometimes no one’s around to let us in or they’re too busy or they don’t like the joke.”_

And then she’d placed her hand on the rock, the familiar coolness seeping up her arm.

 _“Where do snowman go to dance?”_ she’d asked the rock. _“A snowball!”_

The fairies hadn’t answered, and the police and her and John’s parents and whoever else hadn’t listened to her reasoning of why, and she hadn’t been allowed back since.

Now, she was already shaking her head at herself, at the absurdity that telling a joke to the rock would have any other effect now, but she still searched her mind for a joke.

“Hey, fairy rock,” she said after a moment. “Long time no see. What do you call a French man wearing sandals?” There was no answer, but there never was. “Phillipe Phil-op.”

She started to laugh at herself, at the thought that a bad joke about sandals would somehow summon fairies, and started to retract her hand.

But then a tremor went through her, a swoop in her stomach, and she closed her eyes for a second.

Only to open them in a forest that seemed…off.

The trees were the same, if only a little shimmery-er. The fairy rock seemed to almost be glowing. Everything was brighter, sharper.

“Clarke?”

Clarke jumped at the sound of her name, tugging out her earphones and spinning around, her hand leaving the rock.

A girl about her age stood just inside the clearing, staring at her like she’d seen a ghost. Her hair was pulled back from her face with a bandanna, revealing swirling, sparkling tattoos that seemed to dance across her face. One of her arms was covered in burn scars stretching up from her hand to her elbow, and her clothes seemed almost to be made from leaves and flowers.

There was something about her that was familiar, tugging at a corner of Clarke’s mind that she hadn’t accessed in years.

“Do I know you?” she asked, and the girl cocked her head, moving closer.

“You’re Clarke,” she repeated, eyes looking her up and down, a smile slowly stretching across her face. “Aren’t you? You finally came back.”

Clarke swallowed heavily, taking a step back until her back hit the fairy rock.

“How do you know my name?” she asked, and the girl grinned. “What do you mean _back_?”

“Don’t you remember me?” the girl asked, throwing her arms wide. “It’s me. Emori.”

Emori.

The name hit Clarke like a train to the heart, knocking the wind out of her and throwing into question everything she’d believed for years.

Emori wasn’t supposed to be real. She was supposed to be pretend, like calling the fairies with jokes and a rock, like the dragons and the magic of the days when the woods were safe.

She’d brought Emori up, when the police had questioned her, when the therapists had analyzed every aspect of her games with John in the woods.

John had already known Emori before Clarke had been allowed out to play. She’d answered his call at the rocks the first time, laughing her head off at his joke, apparently, and she’d been there to let them in the first time Clarke had come. She was there more often than not, the third of their group.

She’d also been a fairy in Clarke’s memories.

When she’d brought up Emori after John disappeared, though, her very existence had been questioned. She wasn’t a fairy, that much was clear to all of the adults who had taken a stake in her stories of the woods.

But was the rest of Emori real?

A search had gone out in the neighbourhood for any kids named Emori. And then Emily. And Emery. And any other name that could have been mispronounced into Emori by a seven year old.

The search for Emori had been even more fruitless than the search for John, because at least John had seemed to exist at one point. Emori was a figment, as there was none to be found close enough to regularly play in the woods, and Clarke dismissed any little girls with similar names that were found.

So Emori was deemed pretend, an imaginary friend in the form of a fairy that joined Clarke and John in their games.

Clarke had known then that Emori was real, that she existed just as much as herself or John or her parents, but no one believed her. So she’d pretended that Emori wasn’t real until she believed it herself.

“Emori,” she repeated now, her eyes flitting over her old friend’s face. “You’re real.”

Emori laughed, the sound undistinguishable from the tinkering of a bell, and stepped even closer, throwing her arms around Clarke and pressing a kiss to her forehead.

“I missed you,” she said as Clarke hugged her back, still in shock. “You never came back.”

Clarke shook her head, clutching Emori tightly, like she might disappear into smoke at any moment, leaving Clarke to question her sanity like she was seven and alone and missing a friend again.

“I came back,” she whispered. “With the police and my parents. We were looking for John.”

“You know I couldn’t let you in with them,” Emori reminded her of a long forgotten rule of the fairy rock. _No grownups. No one who didn’t believe._ “But you never came back after that.”

Clarke pulled back, leaning against the fairy rock again. “I wasn’t allowed,” she said. “After John disappeared, my parents didn’t let me anywhere near the woods.”

Emori sighed, crossing her arms. “I was gonna you your memories back,” she said. “If you wanted them. You could have traded them for something else after you’d actually had time to think.”

Clarke shook her head. This was too much. None of this made any sense. Not Emori being real. Not whatever she was talking about now, taking her memories, being somehow able to give them back.

“I don’t understand,” she said simply, hoping Emori would get what she was meaning. “How can you give me my memories back?”

Emori cocked her head. “Magic,” she said, like it should be obvious. Clarke just stared at her, and Emori’s face dropped. “You don’t remember? I know they say that adult humans don’t believe, but I thought _you_ would remember.”

Clarke shook her head again, pushing past Emori and starting back towards what she hoped was the path out of the woods. Everything looked different than before she’d touched the fairy rock. The same but different.

“I don’t know who put you up to this,” she said, willing the tears that were starting to cloud her vision to not fall, “but it’s not funny. I was a kid, okay? Emori and the magic and this stupid rock, those were mine. I only told them because I thought it would help find John, but he’s dead and I know that now. So, whoever you are, you can just stop.”

Emori was suddenly in front of her, blocking her path. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “John’s not dead.”

Clarke froze again, staring at her. Nothing about Emori indicated that she was lying, nothing about her showed any sign of being some sort of cruel prank.

“What?”

“John’s not dead,” she repeated. “He’s been here. I know you don’t remember what happened to him, and I don’t know why you seem to think that all of this wasn’t real, but it was. It was real, and the reason you don’t remember those three days is because you traded them to help save his life. Your memories and my healing and our blood.” She smiled at her, softly, like she was trying to coax a scared kitten out from under the bed. “John’s alive, Clarke.”

Clarke tried to wrap her mind around what Emori was saying, that John was alive and that magic was real and that she’d traded her memories of whatever had happened to John for his life.

None of it made any sense.

“I don’t understand,” she whispered again, pleading for Emori to show her something that would make it all make sense.

Emori sighed and rolled her shoulders—and a pair of shimmering blue wings unfolded from her back.

“I’m a fairy,” she told Clarke, slowly, like she was explaining it to a child. “Magic is real. I don’t know what’s made you believe otherwise, but it is.” She took a step towards Clarke, reached out and cupped her shoulder. “Clarke, this is real. I’m real, and John’s alive. Come home with me. If you want, I can get a potion together to get your memories back.”

Clarke found herself nodding, because it was the only thing she could do after finding out that her entire life was a lie. They’d told her that it wasn’t real. They’d told her that she needed to stop pretending if she wanted to help them find John. They’d told her she wasn’t playing with fairies and dragons and magic, that it was all pretend. She’d just been in the woods, they’d said. She’d just been playing.

But here was Emori, who was supposed to be pretend, imaginary, not real. She was here and she was real, and she was a fairy. An actual, real life fairy.

And the fairy rock was real, had really taken her from her own world into a new one, into a one filled with magic.

Her memories weren’t taken from trauma, but given as a gift. Her memories for his life. Not his life and then her memories.

It was all a lie.

Somehow, she’d made it to Emori’s house. Had Emori transported them there by magic? Had Clarke simply been so caught up in her thoughts that she’d managed to completely miss however long the walk had been?

Emori’s house was more a cottage, tucked into the middle of the woods. Shimmering trees grew around the perimeter of her yard, and the rest was filled with plants that Clarke only recognized from the deepest of her suppressed memories. Bright pinks and purples and blues, oranges and reds, every colour under the rainbow and some that Clarke couldn’t even name, some colours unique to the world of the fairies. Everything with a shimmery coating, sparkling in the sunlight shining through the trees.

“I grow plants for the fairies around here,” Emori explained as she led the way to her house. “Things for potions and things that are just pretty. We get a lot of questers.”

Clarke didn’t respond, just let Emori pull her along into the pastel house.

“Speaking of, I should gather the plants for the memory potion. If you want it?” Emori added, and Clarke nodded. She didn’t know what she’d have to do for this potion, but she needed to remember. Remembering might make all of this finally make sense. “Feel free to look around. I’ll be a few.”

And then Clarke was alone, in the house of a girl who wasn’t supposed to be real.

The room she was in was both a living room and a kitchen, the area bright and spacious and somehow larger than it’d been on the outside. She felt herself drawn to the mantle over the fireplace and the picture frame that sat there.

It was old, gathering dust, but the children inside were ones that Clarke would recognize in her sleep.

She was about six in it, with her twin braids and her overalls. Her tongue was sticking out and her fingers pulling the corners of her mouth wide. On the other side of the picture was Emori, six or so as well, with a few less tattoos swirling around her face. Her hand was unburned, both thumbs poking into her cheeks with her fingers splayed, her eyes screwed shut and her nose wrinkled.

And then there was John, tucked in between them, alive and grinning. His hands were behind their heads with two fingers up as bunny ears, and Clarke reached out to touch the figure, to brush her fingers across his face.

They’d been here. Not _here_ here, because Emori had lived inside a tree when they were kids, a detail that Clarke remembered she’d been jealous of.

But they’d been here, in this world. It was real.

This was real. Emori was real. Magic was real. Fairies were real. She hadn’t seen any evidence of dragons yet, but it was looking like they were real, too.

It was all real.

And they’d made her think it wasn’t, think that she was crazy, that she was being a bad friend by telling the truth that no one else would believe.

This was real.

And everything else, everything she’d built her life on, was a lie.

She moved past that picture to a wall with others. She wasn’t present in any of them, but Emori was. As a kid. As a teenager. As the woman she was now.

At her side in most of them was John, growing older and older along with her, no longer the boy frozen in Clarke’s memory, with wings of his own on his back.

She felt herself choking back a sob as she stared at the pictures, as she watched the boy she’d thought was dead grow up.

And then her eyes found one near the centre, one of Emori, looking much like she did now, and John dressed in white, flower crowns ringing their heads and bright grins and matching swirling tattoos on their faces as they posed under an archway of flowers.

_“Why do fairies sometimes have tattoos on their faces?”_

_“Yeah. My mom says you can’t get a job if you put tattoos on your face. Do they not have jobs?”_

_“The tattoos mean they got married, duh. You and the person you marry get matching tattoos so everybody knows you love each other.”_

_“Oh. Humans just use rings.”_

_“Oh.”_

_“Tattoos are cooler. I’m gonna get tattoos instead when I get married.”_

_“Then you gotta marry a fairy, John. Or you can’t get a job.”_

_“I’ll marry Emori, then.”_

_“Eww. No. You smell.”_

_“Ha! Emori’s gonna marry_ me _, John. Not you.”_

_“No. I’m not marrying either of you. Humans are weird.”_

Apparently something had changed her mind.

A door closed behind her, but Clarke couldn’t tear her gaze away from the picture, from John and Emori on their wedding day, both alive and real and happy.

“Clarke?” Emori asked, suddenly at her side.

Clarke swallowed the lump in her throat. “He’s alive?” she whispered, looking away and over at her old friend’s soft smile.

“He is,” she confirmed. “And he should be home in a couple hours. He’ll be really happy to see you, Clarke.” Clarke nodded, and Emori gestured with her full arms. “Ready to get your memories back?”

Clarke followed her into the kitchen and hopped up on a bar stool as Emori ground down flowers and plants and other various things from the kitchen. She explained what they were and what they were for, but Clarke couldn’t concentrate on her words, too busy staring at her hands as they worked.

John was alive. He’d been alive this whole time, living a whole different life in a whole different world. He’d grown up and fallen in love and gotten married.

He was alive.

It was too much all at once, too many things that didn’t make sense with the version of the world she’d thought was the truth.

“Clarke?”

Her name cut through her musing, and she realized Emori was staring at her expectantly.

“Sorry,” she said. “What did you say?”

Emori smiled at her. “I said that I need something of yours in exchange for the memories,” she said. “Equal give and take, or the magic won’t work. It’s been long enough that nothing’ll happen to John, but we don’t want something happening to you.”

“Right,” Clarke said. She remembered that from before, vaguely.

What could she give in exchange?

Her fingers unconsciously traced the scar on her arm, the one that stretched from her wrist to her elbow and still shone a bright white against her skin. She’d given blood for John’s life, apparently. Blood and memories, and then years of being told she was lying, to stop pretending, to tell the truth.

She had been telling the truth. Everything since had been a lie.

“Everything’s a lie,” she told Emori, who looked a little confused. “My entire life is a lie. I don’t want to lie anymore.”

Emori nodded slowly. “You want to trade your ability to lie,” she confirmed, and Clarke nodded. “Alright.”

It was only a few moments before the potion was finished, a shimmering pink liquid that Emori poured into a clear vase, whispering words Clarke had long since forgotten how to understand.

Emori then led Clarke into a bedroom. “Regaining memories can be a lot,” she said, and Clarke nodded. “Stay here as long as you need to. I’ll be in the other room when you’re ready.”

And then she was gone, back to the other room to wait, and Clarke was left alone with her thoughts and the sparkling potion in her hand.

Could she really do this? Could she really drink this potion, trade away her ability to lie for the memory of three days more than a decade and a half ago?

The vase was at her lips before she could think twice. The potion made her mouth tingle and tasted of strawberries and happiness and stardust.

And then the memories came crashing in.

_Sixteen years ago_

Clarke squirmed in her seat as her mom braided her hair, ready to get going. John was probably waiting for her already, and he was going to be an absolute _pain_ if her mom made her late.

“Finished,” her mom said after about six million years, flopping her braids over her shoulders. “Have fun with John and be back for dinner.”

Clarke barely listened, grabbing her backpack from the floor and then sprinting out the door.

“You’re _so_ late,” John told her from where he was sitting on top of the fence gate. “Emori’s gonna fight us.”

“Emori’s gonna fight _you_ ,” Clarke countered, pushing open the gate and causing John to topple off. “Emori likes me more and you have, like, cooties or something.”

“I don’t have _cooties_ ,” John argued, standing up and following after Clarke without wiping the dirt off of him. “ _You_ have cooties.”

Clarke scoffed, reaching up to tug her backpack straps tighter with both hands. “That doesn’t even make any sense.”

“Your face doesn’t make any sense.”

They continued bickering as they made their way through the woods, pausing on their journey to poke at a dead frog with a stick and have a race to see who could climb a tree the fastest (Clarke won).

And then they were at the fairy rock, pressing their now very grubby hands against it.

“It’s _my_ turn,” John said, smirking at Clarke. To be fair to John, it _was_ his turn, but Clarke never liked it when it was John’s turn. “Hello, fairy rock! Why did the doctor think that Jupiter had the chickenpox? Cause it has a big spot!”

John cackled at his own joke, and Clarke rolled her eyes.

“That’s not even funny,” she told him. “They’re never gonna let us in.”

John scoffed. “Emori thinks it’s funny.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Clarke rolled her eyes again. “Emori’s a fairy. She doesn’t even know what planets are.”

Her fingers tingled and her stomach swooped, and then the woods around them were sparkling, and a little girl with bright blue wings was standing on the other side of the rock, her arms crossed over her chest and her face pulled into a frown.

“I do too know what planets are,” Emori corrected, and John let out a self-satisfied _ha_. “That wasn’t a good joke, though.”

Clarke let go of the rock and crossed the clearing, throwing her arms around her friend. “It was a _terrible_ joke,” she agreed, stretching up on her toes to press a kiss against Emori’s forehead, the traditional fairy greeting amongst friends. “Did you find a quest for today?”

Emori returned the kiss and then moved to greet John.

“I got the _best_ quest,” she boasted, grinning. “I got up super early and was the very first one and I got it!”

Clarke and John cheered for her, and Clarke danced in place as Emori tugged John down to kiss his forehead.

“We,” Emori said, releasing John to wipe off his forehead with a sour look on his face, throwing her arms as wide as her grin, “are going to steal from a dragon’s hoard!”

There was more to the quest than that, but they were seven so the involvement of a dragon was really the part that really mattered.

As Emori proceeded to explain, Lexa of the Trikru fairies had had a golden helmet stolen from her by the Wallace dragons. It was currently deep inside their fortress inside Mount Weather, which, at least according to Emori, had never been broken into by a fairy before in the history of forever.

“So we’ll be the first!” she said, jumping up and down and grinning. “They’ll have to give us, like, the biggest prize ever!”

If Clarke had been a grownup, she might have considered how odd it was that a group of seven year olds had been recruited to break into an impenetrable fortress and steal from a dragon.

But she was not a grownup, so she never questioned it. And, besides, it was the way the fairies worked. Children were sent off on quests to hone their skills and practice their magic in practical, real life scenarios. There were adults around if they needed help, and it seemed to work. Clarke had been on hundreds of quests at this point, and she hadn’t died yet. She wasn’t even a fairy, so that was extra successful. Fairies healed a lot faster than humans, after all.

They discussed their plan as they walked to Polis for supplies. Emori had heard rumours of someone there with a map of Mount Weather, which would make their plan a little more detailed.

The actual stealing back of the helmet, though, was easy enough to plan. They’d dealt with enough dragons by now to have it down to a T.

Dragons could smell magic. Everyone knew that. So Emori would be the distraction while Clarke and John stole the helmet. They’d pick up non-magic weapons and stealing supplies while in Polis, just in case, and then it was about a day’s walk to Mount Weather.

The day’s walk didn’t matter. Emori worked the fairy rock, and she could put them back in their world at whatever point they wanted. They’d spent weeks at a time in the fairy world before, and always made it home for dinner. However long this quest lasted, they’d make it in time.

Polis was, in Clarke’s own description to her parents one night over spaghetti, fantaboloshadisciously amaztabacular. Like everything else where the fairies lived, Polis was covered in a shimmering sheen, making everything dream-like and not quite real. The buildings were taller than Clarke had ever seen before, stretching into the sky and probably to the moon, in every shade from bright to neutral earth tones to pastels. The streets were filled with vendors, stalls piled high with weapons or plants or food or anything else that young questers could need for their adventures. It was loud, louder than anywhere Clarke could think of except maybe the school bus. Everyone was yelling—for their friends, for potential trades.

It was fantaboloshadisciously amaztabacular.

“I’ll go find the map,” Emori said as they entered the fray. “You guys find non-magic stuff.”

Non-magic stuff would be a breeze. Most of the fairies who traded in Polis were grownup fairies, which meant that any human friends they’d had as kids were long since gone. You could only get into the fairy world if you believed, according to Emori, and grownups tended to not believe, even those who had come through their own fairy rocks on quests as kids. So these fairies, the grownups, their own human friends were long gone. Their only interactions with humans were with the kids that came to their stalls, so it was well known amongst the questing children which vendors you sent a fairy to and which you sent a human to.

The vendors who sold non-magic things were particularly enchanted by human children and the human things they could trade for.

Clarke went to an old fairy she’d traded with before, grinning widely as she came up to the stand.

“Clarke, dear!” Vera cooed, rounding her stall to cup her cheek and press a kiss to her forehead. “Something’s missing from your mouth!”

Clarke grinned even wider. “I lost a tooth last night,” she said, digging into her pocket. Vera was a retired tooth fairy, one of the few fairy professions that allowed you to travel into the human world, and Clarke knew from experience that a human tooth was worth much more than a couple of dollars in the fairy world, so she’d saved it. Tooth fairy law was that a tooth was only up for grabs if it was under a pillow, after all. She pulled out the tooth, one of the big ones in the front, and held it out proudly.

“You did.” Vera took it from Clarke’s hand, turning it over and holding it up to the light. “And a good one at that. What are you looking for today?”

They met up again just outside of town, by the fallen tree they always met at. Clarke had traded her tooth for more than enough non-magic weapons to get them through the quest. John had traded his peanut butter sandwich to a particularly nostalgic fairy for some rope, and a keychain off his backpack for the general array of plants that were needed in most questing spells. Emori had managed to find a map of Mount Weather and the rest of their supplies.

They poured over the map as they ate their lunches, running through scenarios. They could pull a full-frontal assault, but if it was that easy, someone would have broken in before. They could each go in one of the three doors and hope there weren’t enough dragons in the mountain to go after them all at once.

There were so many options, some better than others. Emori said that the fairy who’d sold her the map had said it was incomplete, that it was only made from the memories of those who’d managed to survive. The treasure might not even be where it was drawn, but hiding their treasure in the middle seemed like the safest spot for dragons to put it.

“What about that?” John asked through a mouthful of Clarke’s ham and cheese sandwich. He pointed at a tiny mark on top of the mountain. “Do you think it’s a hole?”

They stared at it for a few minutes, pondering it over their food. It could be a hole. It could also be a smudge or a scratch or a log.

If it was a hole, though, it seemed to lead directly into the treasure room.

“That’s a good plan,” Clarke decided. “It’ll be Plan A.”

Plan A was the best plan, so they didn’t need to think of a Plan B until they needed it. And they wouldn’t need it.

The walk to Mount Weather was the longest walk in the history of walks. Clarke was pretty confident that no one had ever walked for longer than them.

They took breaks, of course. There was a waterfall that made your hair turn green while it was wet, and they had to stop there. And there were logs to walk on and trees to climb and butterflies to chase. They had snacks and dinner and more snacks. They swam with a mermaid. They slept under the stars when it got too dark to keep walking.

Another thing Clarke might have questioned about the fairy world if she’d been a grownup was the logic behind sending children to complete supposedly important quests. Seven year olds tended to get distracted really easily.

It was almost lunch time on the second day when Mount Weather finally came into view, standing tall and intimidating in front of them. There was smoke swirling from the front entrance, the forest around the mountain charred and dead.

“Cool,” Clarke said.

“Super cool,” John agreed.

“The coolest,” Emori added.

John had packed his binoculars, and they took turns looking at the map and through them, trying to figure out whether the hole was really a hole or not.

“Is that it?” Emori asked, binoculars pressed to her eyes. She pointed, like Clarke or John could have seen what she was looking at with their bare eyes. “Between the purple tree and the big rock?”

Clarke took the binoculars from her, searching the mountainside for the purple tree and the big rock. Tucked into the shadows was something that was almost definitely a hole.

“We found it!” she said, passing the binoculars off to John and then doing a victory dance.

They ate lunch and went over the plan again. Clarke had brought her walkie talkies, and she and John would take one and head in through the hole. Emori would have the other and stay back far enough that the dragons wouldn’t suspect her. Once Clarke and John found the treasure room, they’d radio Emori and she’d come in through the front and cause a distraction. Then Clarke and John would split up and search for the helmet. Whoever found it would give a bird call signal, and then everyone would get out. Then they’d find Lexa of the Trikru fairies and return the helmet and get their reward. And Clarke and John would be home in time for dinner.

It was foolproof, a word that Clarke wasn’t entirely sure the meaning of but she’s pretty sure it meant perfect.

She tightened her backpack straps and exchanged forehead kisses with Emori before starting up the side of the mountain with John.

“We’re gonna kick the dragons in the butt,” John said, jumping over a puddle.

Clarke jumped into the puddle, the glittery water splashing up the sides of her pink gumboots. “We’re gonna kick the dragons in the faces!”

They listed other places they’d kick the dragons as they climbed the side of the mountain, stopping occasionally to pull out the binoculars and find the tree or to radio jokes and observations to Emori.

“There it is!” John hissed, pointing ahead.

And there it was. A hole in the ground, just large enough for a seven year old with a backpack to crawl into.

“We’re going in, over,” John whispered into the walkie talkie.

 _“Roger that,”_ Emori whispered back. _“Over.”_

Clarke stared down into the darkness for a minute, taking a deep breath. She could do this. It was just a hole. They didn’t have spiders or bats in the fairy world, as far as she knew, so the hole would be fine. 

“Let’s do this,” she told John, and he nodded.

The hole was a tight fit, but they crawled through, Clarke leading the way with the flashlight. There were forks and turns, but they stuck with the tried and true plan of dragon quests.

Dragons breathe fire. Fire is warm. Dragons like to keep the treasure where they can watch it, so the treasure is usually where its warm, so you followed the warm paths and you usually got to the treasure.

It worked this time, too, as they soon found themselves huddled over a hole, staring down into a room filled with treasure.

And dragons.

“I see two?” Clarke whispered, trying to pick the scales out from the shining treasures. The Wallace dragons were all red, so they weren’t too difficult to find. The helmet would be harder.

“I see three,” John whispered back, and then pointed them out.

Clarke nodded and they got to work. There was a spike in one of their backpacks, and they pulled it out and pushed it slowly into the wall of the tunnel. Dragons had terrible hearing, so they didn’t worry too much about being quiet. Then the ropes came out, tying them onto the loop at the end of the spike and then attaching them to their waists.

John pulled out the walkie talkie again, holding it up to his mouth. “Come in, Emori. Over.”

It took a second, and then the walkie talkie was crackling to life. _“What is it? Over.”_

“We found the treasure,” John whispered, eyes sparkling in excitement. “We’re ready for the distraction. Over.”

_“Roger that. Over.”_

They stared down through the hole again, scanning the room as they waited for Emori to start her distraction.

“You take everything on that side of the giant naked statue,” Clarke decided, pointing down into the treasure room. “I’ll take everything on this side, and we’ll find the helmet.”

“Got it,” John said, and then elbowed her, pointing in another direction.

The dragons were leaving, starting one after another down one of the tunnels leading out of the treasure room. Clarke worried for a second for Emori, but she knew she could handle more than three dragons on her own. She’d be fine.

As the last dragon disappeared down a tunnel, Clarke and John high fived and then started rappelling down.

It was a race against the clock then, running through the treasure and searching for the helmet.

It was difficult, since there was a lot of gold in the treasure room. Gold pieces. Gold goblets. Gold treasure chests full of more gold. There were other colours in there, sure, but there was so much gold.

And then she saw it, tucked half hidden in a pile of gold and jewels and other treasures. It was shining and golden and almost looked like it was made from bones.

“John!” Clarke hissed, trying to whisper but still have him hear her. “John, I found it!”

She climbed the pile, digging her hands and feet into the treasure as she inched closer and closer to the helmet. She grabbed onto it with both hands, tugging harder and harder until it came loose—and the entire pile came crashing down around her.

“Oh, butts,” Clarke said, scrambling to her feet and shoving the helmet into her backpack as she went.

Dragons couldn’t hear very well, but there was no way they didn’t hear that.

“We don’t have time for the ropes,” John yelled, and Clarke had to agree, as she could already hear the dragons coming back. “We gotta leave!”

She couldn’t tell which tunnel they were coming up. It sounded like dragons were coming towards them from all sides.

“We gotta fight,” she corrected, digging in her backpack for a sword. “John, we’re gonna have to fight them!”

“Butts,” John sighed, and then he was next to her, sword in hand.

The fight lasted six seconds and six years.

Only one dragon reappeared. Emori must have taken care of the others outside.

One dragon came in, looking mad, smoke swirling from its mouth.

And then Emori was there, magic shooting from her hands, keeping it at bay as Clarke rounded to attack from the back.

And then the dragon was swinging his head, chest puffing out as it prepared to shoot out its fire—right at Emori.

“Emori!” Clarke yelled, not caring that she was giving away her position. “Emori, look out!”

The fire came out almost in slow motion. Emori didn’t have time to move, only to stare at the dragon in horror.

And then she was flying, falling through the air as another body shoved her out of the path of the fire.

“John!” Clarke yelled, clutching her sword as she watched the charred, burning body of her friend fall to the floor.

“No!” Emori screamed, and a flash of light and sparkles and magic brighter than anything Clarke had seen before shot out from her chest, stunning the dragon.

Clarke forced herself to make her move then, jumping forward and swinging her sword, digging it deep into the dragon’s neck until it sliced clean through, the head falling to the ground with a thump.

And then she was running forward, joining Emori at John’s side.

She’d gotten the fire out, at least, one blistering, burned hand clutched tight against her chest.

“John?” Clarke whispered, reaching out but not wanting to touch him, not knowing how or where to touch him when his whole body looked like it was melting. “John?”

“We’re getting out of here,” Emori said, and fumbled around until her backpack came off. She dug around in it, dropping some herbs and potion bottles onto the ground, the glass smashing as their contents spilled over the plants. She whispered the spell, and Clarke made herself grab onto John’s hand, her other going to Emori’s knee. She noticed dully that she’d lost a hair tie, one of her braids unravelling and falling into her face.

She blinked, and they were somewhere else. A hospital. And then they were yelling for someone to help them, please.

Clarke stared at John’s form in his bed. One of the doctors had told them that they’d done some sort of magic on him to keep his heart going, that they were trying to figure out what else they should do. Emori was in the chair beside her, staring down at her burnt hand. It was healing, because fairies healed faster than humans. It’d be better in a few hours, and already looked less blistery and more like it’d been scarred for years. She still couldn’t unbend her fingers, though.

Emori grabbed her hand when one of the doctors, Nyko, came back in.

“Your friend John is human,” he said, like they didn’t already know that. “We don’t know a whole lot about human medicine. Maybe if he was back in the human world, they’d be able to heal him, but we can’t here.”

“No,” Clarke whispered, squeezing Emori’s hand. “No, you have to fix him.”

“There’s something we can try,” Nyko continued, and Clarke was already nodding, already giving permission to do whatever they had to do to fix John, to keep him alive. “We could turn him into a fairy.”

It was experimental, he explained. Only a few humans had been known to have been turned into fairies in all of history. There was no guarantee that he’d survive.

But he wasn’t going to survive if they did nothing.

“Do it,” Clarke said, because, as the only other human in their questing group, she had authority over John’s life. “We gotta fix him.”

“If this works,” Nyko said, “he won’t be able to go home. He’ll be a fairy, and we can’t cross over into your world. He’ll have to stay here.”

“That’s okay,” Clarke said, nodding quickly. “I’ll come visit.”

There was paperwork, and Clarke’s hand was shaking as she tried to print their names as neatly as she could.

And then it was time.

“Emori,” Nyko said, standing over John’s bed. “We need you to give up some aspect of being a fairy for him.”

Clarke looked over at Emori, wondering what she’d choose. Her friend swallowed heavily, holding her still healing hand closer to her chest.

“My healing,” she said, nodding. “I’ll give him my healing.”

“Emori,” Clarke whispered, squeezing her hand again. “Your hand. It’s not finished.”

Emori looked over at her, eyes shining with tears but hard.

“I don’t need my hand,” she told Clarke. “I need John.”

Clarke nodded in understanding. She’d give up her hand too if she needed it.

“Alright,” Nyko agreed. “We’ll bandage your arm up after we’re done. It should heal like a human’s.” He turned his gaze to Clarke. “I need something of yours, too. A memory, one that includes him.”

Clarke thought it over, trying to figure out what part of John she could live with forgetting.

All she could see was him lying on the ground, burnt and unrecognizable and unmoving.

“This quest,” she said. “I want to forget this quest.”

Things proceeded quickly after that. She’d be put into a sleeping state once the memory was taken, and then one of the other fairies would take her to the fairy rock. Her muscle memory would take her home, and she’d awaken when she reached her home.

Before that, though, both Clarke and Emori had to share their blood with John.

Clarke took the knife that was offered and sliced a long cut up her arm, just to make sure they had enough blood after she left. She watched it drip down onto John, mixing with Emori’s blood on his stomach, numb to the pain that should be radiating from the gash.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised, hugging Emori tightly. “Watch him. Make sure he’s okay.”

Emori hugged her back just as tight, pressing her face into her neck. “I won’t leave him.”

And then they were kissing goodbye, lips pressed to foreheads, and then Nyko was beginning the spell.

The next memory Clarke had was knocking on her back door, and her parents’ worry and excitement as they saw her.

She didn’t know it then, but she realized now that she’d forgotten to tell Nyko that she was supposed to be home for dinner.

_Present_

Clarke gasped, fists clenching around handfuls of blankets from the bed she’d collapsed on. Tears were still streaming down her face, her head pounding from the onslaught of memories.

How had she ever thought that none of this was real? How had she let them convince her that she was making this up? 

Emori was real. Emori had been one of her best friends, and she’d just forgotten about her. She’d let her parents and John’s parents and the police and her therapists convince her that she was making her up. She’d let them convince her that Emori was just an imaginary friend.

And John. She’d known he wasn’t dead. Even though she couldn’t remember, she’d known in her bones that he was still alive. She’d _known_ , but she’d let them believe he was dead, let them convince her that she might be wrong about it, too.

Logically, she couldn’t _really_ blame the adults in her life. She’d talked about fairies and magic rocks, things that weren’t supposed to exist and that kids made up in games. She probably wouldn’t have believed it a week ago if a kid had told her that her missing friend was probably just with the fairies.

But she’d been telling the truth. If someone had believed her, if her parents hadn’t banned her from the woods, insisted she stay within their sight at all times, she would have known years ago. She would have had Emori and John when none of the other kids at school would talk to her. She would have known that they were real, that they were alive, and that would have been enough.

Everything else started coming back to her slowly, and she could hear voices outside the room, Emori’s hushed whispers and another more desperate voice. She took another moment to gather her thoughts and whipped the tears from her eyes, vaguely wondering just how long she’d been in this room.

When she stood, it was on shaky legs, and she crossed the room and pulled open the door.

Emori was talking quietly when Clarke stepped out, but was blocked from her vision by a man who had his back to the room she’d come out of, green wings flicking behind him in agitation, and neither noticed her for a moment. Clarke took in the curve of his shoulders, the cut of his hair, and wondered whether she really recognized him or if it was just her imagination playing tricks. It’d been sixteen years. He’d been seven when he disappeared. She shouldn’t be able to recognize him from his back.

Emori noticed her then, her words that Clarke still wasn’t really hearing cut off. “Clarke,” she said, and then he was turning around.

It was him. Even if she hadn’t seen the pictures of him growing up, she would’ve known. He had the same eyes and the same nose, and he’d lost the baby fat and cut his hair, but it was him.

“Clarke?” he said, hesitant, like he still couldn’t believe it despite everything Emori must have told him.

And then she was running, crossing the room faster than she should have been able to and crashing into him, holding him tight. He held her back just as tightly, pressing his face against her hair.

“You’re alive,” she whispered. “Oh my god, John.”

“You’re here,” he whispered back, holding her so tightly that she should have been worried for her breathing. “You came back.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner,” Clarke told him, eyes closed against the tears that were falling again. “I tried, but you were missing and my parents wouldn’t let me go in the woods anymore and—”

“Thank you,” John breathed, cutting her off. “I’ve wanted to thank for saving me for years. Clarke, you have no idea—” He cut himself off, and Clarke squeezed him tighter.

“Of course I’d do it,” she said. “John, I’d give away all my memories to save either of you.”

She pulled back enough to look at him, raising a hand to cup his cheek, thumb tracing over the swirling lines of his tattoo.

“You’re here,” she told him, still not quite believing it, shaking her head. “You’re both here. This is real.”

“It’s real,” John confirmed, a shaky grin stretching across his face. “How’s life in the human world? How’s Wells and everyone from school? And my parents?”

Clarke felt her heart drop. It’d been years since she’d thought about John’s parents. She’d been at both their funerals, in a black dress that itched and was a little too small. Her mom had bought it well before either of John’s parents had died. No one had said it, but everyone knew she’d wanted to be prepared for when the police found his body in the woods.

But none of that mattered now. Because now she had to tell John that his parents had been dead for years.

She decided she was going to lie. What John didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. He couldn’t get back into the human world, so he didn’t _need_ to know that his parents weren’t there anymore. She’d tell him something else, something about how they moved away when she was still little and that she hadn’t heard from them in years.

“Your parents are dead,” was what came out instead, and Clarke was suddenly reminded that she’d given up her ability to lie. The shaky grin fell from John’s face, and Clarke hurried to try to backtrack. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

John swallowed heavily and nodded. “How?” he asked, voice tight.

“Your dad’s heart just stopped, I think,” Clarke said, suddenly wishing she hadn’t been nine and that people had told her more details. Or that she’d thought to ask. “They said it was a broken heart. Your mom…she started drinking after you disappeared. I don’t know exactly how she died, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with that.” She paused, eyes scanning John’s face. “I’m sorry.”

John just nodded again. “It’s okay,” he said, even though Clarke was pretty sure that was a lie. But she hadn’t known him for sixteen years, so if he wanted to pretend it was okay that his parents were dead, she could let him. He had Emori, and she knew that after she went home, Emori would be there for him to process it.

A cry ripped her attention away from John, only to find Emori shushing a baby in her arms.

“You have a baby?” she whispered, stepping out of John’s arms and moving over to Emori. “I didn’t know you had a baby.”

The baby was small, maybe a couple of months old, and was dressed in clothes that looked more like they were made from leaves and petals than fabric. Tiny teal wings fluttered lightly from her back.

“She bloomed a little over three months ago,” Emori said, smiling down at her baby. Clarke stared at her blankly. By the snort that John gave next to her, she was pretty sure that the topic of his parents no longer being alive was shelved at least for now.

“I told you human babies don’t come from flowers,” he said, gently shoving his wife’s shoulders. He looked at Clarke. “They have to grow inside people, right? Like you eat something and then the baby grows in your stomach? How does it come out?”

Clarke blinked at him and then laughed. “I am not giving you a human sex ed class right now,” she told him, and Emori scoffed.

“We know how sex works,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We just want you to tell John that he’s insane for thinking that humans have to grow their babies inside them instead of in flowers like actual, civilized people.”

Clarke rolled her eyes. “Flowers would be so much easier,” she agreed. “But humans do grow babies inside them.”

“Gross.” Emori shuddered.

Clarke focused her attention back on the baby, who had stopped crying and was now sucking her thumb.

“Hi, baby,” Clarke cooed, reaching out to stroke a finger over the baby’s face. “What’s your name?”

There was a beat of silence, too heavy for Clarke to not notice. She looked up from the baby, glancing between John and Emori.

“Clarke,” he said, and she almost asked him why he was saying her name, but then he glanced over her smiling softly. “We named her Clarke. We thought we were never going to see you again.”

And then Clarke was crying again, wrapping them up in her arms.

Clarke didn’t know how long she stayed at the Murphy house—the new Murphy house, full of actual, living Murphys and not the ghosts of ones she used to know. She told them about her life, about med school and her boyfriend and the apartment she had in Azgeda where it snowed all the time. She told them too many things that were too deep, too many things she’d never told anyone, but she blamed that on the fact that she couldn’t lie anymore.

John and Emori told her about their lives too, about how they fell in love and the differences of living in the fairy world as adults rather than children.

They talked and talked and talked, until it was dark out and Clarke could barely keep her eyes open.

“I should go,” she said. It was true, even if she didn’t want to. She should go home and she should process this, process everything.

But there was a part of her that was scared of leaving, scared that once she left, once she went home, she wouldn’t be able to come back here again.

And she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t go home and be stuck there again. She couldn’t question her sanity again. She couldn’t lose John and Emori again. She couldn’t lose Little Clarke, even though she’d only known her an afternoon.

“You could stay,” Emori suggested, hope shining in her eyes. “We’re only supposed to turn humans in an emergency, but we could make an exception.”

And there it was. The other option.

She could stay. She could stay here, become a fairy. If she wanted a baby, she could grow one in her garden and never have to be pregnant. She could get a job as a fairy healer, meet a nice fairy and settle down and get married.

She could have a life here, with people she’d thought she’d never see again.

But.

“I can’t,” she said, knowing it was true even before she was able to say it. “I have a life at home. I’ve got school and Bellamy and my parents. I can’t stay here.”

John got up and left, the front door banging shut behind him, and Clarke wondered whether she’d offended him in some way.

But then he was back, a rock the size of his fist in hand, dropping it down onto the table between them. The rock sparkled in the light, and Clarke couldn’t take her eyes off it until blood started dripping onto it.

She looked up at John, knife in one hand and the other clenched and dripping blood, his eyes closed as he whispered a spell under his breath. He finished and a light shot out of the rock, shining brightly for a moment before returning to normal, a second identical rock appearing beside it.

“Here,” he said, pushing one of them across the table. “A new fairy rock. It’s portable.”

It still took a while after that for Clarke to leave. There was more crying, more stories, more wondering if when she left, she’d ever see them again.

But then, eventually, she was shoving the fairy rock into her pocket and standing up.

“I can’t lie,” she told them, shuffling from foot to foot. “I can’t keep this from Bellamy, but I can’t lie to him either. But he won’t believe me. This, fairies, rocks that let you travel to another world, it’s not supposed to be real.”

“Bring him,” Emori said, and Clarke glanced at her. “It’s technically illegal to bring non-believers here, but I brought you today, and, if you bring him, he’ll believe. It’ll be fine.”

“Bring your textbook about human babies, too,” John added, adjusting his grip on his own sleeping non-human baby. “I still don’t think Emori believes us.”

She made promises on both and then she was kissing Emori and Little Clarke goodbye on their foreheads, and she was leaving with John. The fairy rock in her pocket wouldn’t work until there was a counterpart in each world, so they had to go back to the one in the woods.

“I really missed you,” she told John for probably the hundredth time as they walked through the woods. “I knew you weren’t dead at first, that you were probably here, but they convinced me you were gone.”

“I’m not dead.” John reached out, throwing his arm over her shoulders and tugging her into his side. How long had it been since the three of them had curled up together for warmth as they slept under the stars on a quest? “You and Emori made sure of that. I missed you, too, Griffin.”

They reached the fairy rock and Clarke stared at it, part of her still terrified that she’d never see them again.

“Don’t stay away as long this time,” John said, and Clarke turned to throw her arms around him.

“Your rock better work,” she told him, face pressed into his shoulder. “If it doesn’t, I’ll break in here and throw it at your face.”

John snorted and held her tight. “It’ll work,” he assured her. “Probably. I’ve never made one before, but Emori didn’t correct it and my magic is basically the best ever.”

Clarke laughed. “That can’t be true,” she said, smiling against him, because the mocking stroking of his ego she’d meant to say was definitely a lie.

Eventually, she had to pull away because she couldn’t just stand in the middle of some magic woods hugging him forever.

“Home in time for dinner?” he asked, and Clarke smiled, nodding. He pulled a knife from his belt, slitting his hand and dribbling some blood onto the rock and mumbling a spell under his breath. The rock started to shine, and he stepped back, scrubbing the blood off his already healing hand onto his pants.

“There’s your ride,” he said, shuffling awkwardly. “You and your boyfriend had better start working on growing a baby so our kid has someone to quest with.”

Clarke laughed and pulled him in for another hug. “See you soon,” she whispered, stretching up to kiss him goodbye.

He returned the kiss, lips hard against her forehead. “I’m holding you to it, Griffin.”

She stepped away from him and reached out, her hand pressing against the fairy rock.

Her fingers tingled and her stomach swooped, and then she was opening her eyes in a different forest.

The human world felt small. Nothing shimmered in the evening air. Everything was dull and lifeless. She remembered the feeling from returning as a kid, but she’d had John with her then. She hadn’t been the only person travelling between worlds.

But she had a fairy rock of her own in her pocket, and permission to tell Bellamy once she went back to school, and that was going to be enough.

It _would_ be enough because she could see John and Emori and Little Clarke whenever she wanted. After sixteen years of thinking John was dead and Emori didn’t exist, she could see them whenever she wanted.

Her phone was vibrating madly in her pocket, hours of notifications that she couldn’t receive in the fairy world coming in, but she ignored it, starting back towards her parents’ house at a jog.

For the first time in her life, she thought of the house next door as the Greens’ rather than the Murphys’ as she passed. A new family of Murphys had a new home somewhere else now.

Her parents were waiting inside the door when she got home, her mom clearly in the middle of pacing and her dad’s hair a mess from running his hands through it.

“Where have you been?” Abby asked, like she was a kid again and not a twenty three year old adult whose run went a few hours long.

Clarke tried to push a lie onto her tongue, something believable that would placate her parents enough to let her go upstairs to her room to process the insane day she’d had.

“With the fairies,” was what she said instead, the same truth she’d told them sixteen years ago, after she’d disappeared for three days. “I was with the fairies.”

They hadn’t believed her then, and they didn’t believe her now.

“I ran into a friend, okay?” she added, cutting off their arguments with a sigh. “We were talking, and I lost track of time.”

Her parents were still trying to argue with her, still trying to get her to give more details or tell them why her run had turned into being out all day without calling, but Clarke was done.

She couldn’t lie anymore. She wouldn’t have wanted to even if she could. She was done lying, even to please her parents or make them not worry.

She was done living a lie.

**Author's Note:**

> So I may or may not have some ideas for a sequel which covers John and Emori's POV from the life saving to Clarke returning and also Bellamy being forcibly brought to a fairy world to meet his girlfriend's friends who are both fairies and actually real, but no promises.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed this hot mess! Remember to vote if you enjoyed it! Comments and kudos give me life!


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